


Open Book

by spacefemme



Series: Containing the Supernova [5]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Coming Out, Drabbles, Fluff, Gen, Guilt, Memory Loss, Trauma, i assume dipper didn't go by his nickname when he was really little
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-04-07 06:00:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14074449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacefemme/pseuds/spacefemme
Summary: Mabel's never been one to close herself off, least of all from her family. But things change, and kids grow up.





	1. Summer #00

Stan looked down at the two toddlers sharing the armchair with him, having been entrusted with them briefly while their parents mingled with the other extended family being hosted for Shermie's other son's wedding. Mason sat on the ottoman facing away from everyone. He was shy, apparently even without guests around. Any attempt to ask him how he liked preschool, what his favorite color was, or what he wanted to do when he grew up was met with murmurs that were probably saying _I dunno_ or something of the like, but were hard to make out. Eventually he gave up and decided to try and talk to the little girl on his lap wearing way more bows and barrettes than she needed.

“So, Mabel,” he said, as she stared up at him with bright eyes and the saccharine-sweet smile of a kid from a stock photo inside a picture frame on a store shelf. “How ‘bout you? How’s school goin’?”

Immediately she jumped down to the floor and ran off. At first Stan thought maybe she was scared of him or just nervous like her brother, but her expression hadn’t changed at all, she wasn’t crying or screaming, and she skipped part of the way to wherever she was headed. Before long, she was skipping back with a piece of paper in her hand. She stopped in front of the armchair where her uncle and brother were seated and held it up proudly, displaying a whole page of obnoxiously colorful stickers with awful puns on them.

“My teacher gave me these!”

She shoved the stickers into Stan’s hands, presumably so he could examine these wonders more closely.

“They’re, uh, nice,” he managed.

“I like that one best,” she said, standing on her tiptoes on the side of the chair to point out one with a drawing of a bunch of grapes with surrounding text that read ‘Have a _grape_ day!’

“Yeah? You like the color?”

She nodded.

“Purple’s your favorite?”

She shook her head vigorously.

“No?” he said. “What’s your favorite color?”

“All of ‘em,” she declared.

“That explains the hair, then,” he said, despite his best efforts so far not to say anything to them that could somehow come across as an insult. He wasn’t great at word choice with other adults, so kids couldn’t be much easier, and the outcome of offending them was definitely worse in his experience.

But as scared as he was that she would burst into tears or stomp out of the room in a huff, she just kept grinning at him and nodded again.

“Okay, well...you got a favorite book?”

He realized the second the words left his mouth that she was about to dart off again if she did have one, and sure enough, she rushed down the hall past all her aunts and uncles and cousins to go get his answer for him. Mason was looking down at the floor silently.

“So your sister got all the spunk, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mason said quietly, shuffling around to face him, though it was pretty possible he didn’t know what that meant.

“What’d you get?”

“I’m...um...I’m good at math.” It sounded like a question, or a lie he wasn’t sure Stan was going to buy. 

“Are ya?”

“Yeah.” 

“Prove it. What’s two plus two?”

“F-four…”

“Five plus three?” 

“Si - no, eight!” He looked up at his great uncle anxiously, as if expecting him to scrutinize his mathematical skill. 

“Heh,” Stan ruffled Mason’s hair, making him flinch. “Ain’t you a little poindexter?” As he said it, his ears caught a voice even higher-pitched than this kid’s. 

Looking up toward the top of the stairs, he found that the source of the noise was his niece running back again, this time holding a small paperback book and a stuffed bear with a bowler hat. As she passed a few of her other relatives, she held the bear up to them and chirped, “Wokka wokka! Wokka wokka!” The grown-ups chuckled in return and reaffirmed to her that yes, that was what he was supposed to say. 

She skipped up to Stan’s side once again, this time shoving a book with a big brown rabbit on the cover in his face.

“Cute,” he said, gently pushing it away.

“Pet it,” she raised it up again.

“What?”

She demonstrated by running her hand up and down the drawing of the rabbit, which he now noticed protruded a bit from the cover. He humored her and did the same. It was velvety to the touch - probably perfect for her. She flipped to a page in the middle of the book and waited for him to pet an illustration of an otter swimming in a river. 

“Yeah, that’s real nice, kid,” he said, his annoyance now a little more noticeable to everyone but her.

Unfazed, she dropped the hand holding the book to her side and lifted the one holding her bear. This time she didn’t say anything, just stared up at him intently. He glanced at Mason, who seemed to be equally confused. 

“Wh-whaddaya want me to do?”

Still silent, she dropped the book on the floor, pushed herself up onto the armrest, climbed back onto his lap, and pointed to her stuffed animal’s bulbous pink nose. Stan furrowed his brow, and when she saw he still wasn’t getting the message, she squished his nose with her free hand.

“Very funny,” he sighed, nasally-voiced from Mabel blocking his airway. She laughed, looking awfully pleased with herself and even getting her brother to manage a giggle as well.

  



	2. Summer #01

Mabel didn’t know if she’d really expected to be okay after three days. She had spent the last couple of nights reminding Dipper that he didn’t have to be, in whatever time they had between helping Stan get his mind back and sleep. For her, that gap was a lot longer tonight. Dipper had been asleep for a couple of hours now, and the sheer normalcy of the sight confounded her. Waddles tried to comfort her, but it soon became clear that nothing was doing the trick. She smiled just for a second and scratched his ears before quietly standing up out of bed, picking up a flashlight from the nightstand, and tiptoeing downstairs, her pet following close behind.

Upon reaching the kitchen, she gently turned the light switch so as not to wake Stan and Ford, both of whom had fallen asleep in the living room again. As Waddles curled up in one of the chairs, Mabel poured some milk into a mug and zapped it in the microwave for a minute. She was careful to stop the timer before it could go off, but that apparently hadn’t been necessary to wake up an old man with only a vague concept of who he and the people around him were.

Stan yawned, “What’re you doin’ up, kid?” Mabel gasped sharply, startled by the sudden voice coming from behind her.

“Oh,” she exhaled. “Sorry, Grunkle Stan.” She took her cup to the table and pulled a chair out for herself. “I just couldn’t sleep.” Her downcast eyes must have had a dozen bags underneath them. Stan’s memory may still have been a work in progress, but he did remember that it was usually the _other_ twin who had those. 

He sat down across from her, his brows lowered with concern, and spoke in as hushed a tone as he could, “Yeah? What’s eatin’ ya?” 

“Just... everything that’s been going on this week. I don’t know if you remember it yet, but it’s been a lot, you know?” She turned her head up to look at him again.

“Sounds like it,” he replied as she took a small sip from her mug. “Way Ford’s been sidesteppin’ my questions, must’ve been some tough sh-” He cleared his throat. “Uh, stuff. I’m guessing it’s the reason for this.” He tapped his index finger against his temple. 

“Yeah,” said Mabel. “I don’t know how gratifying it’s gonna be to get _those_ memories back.” 

“Well, hey,” he shrugged. “It’s all in the past, right? Long as it helps get me back to normal.” 

Of course _now_ Stan had to be full of sage life advice. _He_ had to be the one telling her what she already knew was right, yet wasn’t totally convinced of. Earlier in the summer, she had told her friends that this was the wrong attitude. She was furious with herself for being such a coward about it now. She let out a small whimper as the tears started to fall. 

Stan’s eyes widened. “Kid,” he said, but wondered if that phrasing was part of the problem. He corrected himself, “Mabel. Look, whatever happened, it’s over now, isn’t it?” 

They both hated the fact that it was a genuine question on his part. Mabel nodded, biting her lip in an attempt to stop herself from crying.

“You’re lucky,” she said, wiping her eyes with the sleeves of her pajama shirt. His head jerked backward slightly, and he looked at her in puzzlement.

“I wanna forget,” she admitted. “I know I shouldn’t and I have to remember so I can do better and it’s dangerous to try to block it out, but I hate it and I don’t _want_ to remember, I just...I just wanna-” She gasped, trying to catch her breath between sobs. 

“Hey, hey,” Stan got out of his seat and went to where his niece was sitting, kneeling down to her level and placing a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to calm her. “Listen, everybody’s shaken up from it. But you’ve got a house fulla’ people who’re here for you.”

She met his gaze, eyes still filling with tears.

He sighed in frustration at his inability to properly empathize with her, “I might not know exactly what happened to you guys yet, but I know I’ve been through some hard times, and I made it out okay. And I remember enough about you to know you will, too.” He smiled encouragingly and poked her in the shoulder. “You’re tough, you and your brother.”

She managed a weak smile, and hugged him tight, sniffling with her head buried in his shoulder. He returned the gesture and patted her gently on the back. Unbeknownst to either of them, there was someone else standing in the doorway. This person didn’t dare intrude. It had been too long since he had had the right to be a part of these moments.


	3. Summer #02

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mabel and Ford have a moment and I sneak in a Darkwing Duck reference.

Dipper and Mabel’s teenage life was already a mixed bag. They had handled their eighth grade classes fine, and had both made a decent number of friends at school, but a lot of their classmates were under the impression that graduating middle school meant they had to be aloof and act as if every small argument in their social circle was a huge betrayal that they were obligated to tell the world about. A lot of the girls in their class thought they had to change their entire persona to either counteract a certain image or fit it to a t. The boys felt they only had the latter option for themselves. Mabel didn’t bother trying to follow their example. She still refused to be anything other than precisely what felt right, in all but one respect. She had confided this to Dipper, Candy, Grenda, and only them, knowing that if the wrong person found out, that meant _everyone_ was going to. She wasn’t in any way ready for that.

But for now, the kids were enjoying their remaining time before high school. Stan and Ford had already docked the _Stan O’War II_ and gotten settled in to Fiddleford’s mansion for the summer, making it easier for them to drive down to Piedmont for the kids’ graduation, then take them up to Gravity Falls as soon as they were packed and ready.

A lot can go wrong in a ten-hour drive, but they mostly managed. Dipper got an early start on his reading list for Honors English, and Mabel tried to engage everyone in the alphabet game, only recruiting Ford, who was unable to stop noticing subsequent letters on signs once he’d seen an “A.” Waddles was restless for the first few hours, and the kids had to keep a watchful eye on him after he shimmied up to the front seat and nudged the gear shift with his snout, sending everyone hurtling backward in the left lane of the highway, just avoiding a collision when Ford backed into the grassy median and put it back in drive.

Stan took a moment to slow his breath, then looked over his shoulder at an equally shaken pair of just-barely-teenagers, addressing Mabel. “Kid, would you strap in that heap a’ ham? We’re pushin’ how much I can take before my heart gives out.”

Ford raised an eyebrow as he merged back onto the road, “A week and a half ago you were mad about not getting a chance to punch that mer-Yeti in the jaw.”

“The ocean is a glorious and unfathomable nightmare,” Stan said matter-of-factly as Mabel sat Waddles down and buckled him in the middle seat. “It’s got a fun variety of near-death experiences that I’ve come to expect there. I’d like to believe the road is safer.”

Dipper looked up from his book. “Grunkle Stan, you once crashed this car through the back door of an animal shelter.”

“It took two weeks for them to round up all the hamsters,” Mabel said cheerfully, recalling the time she had spotted one of them in Lazy Susan’s cake stand, nibbling on a pastry that was on display. Before she even finished speaking, Waddles had chewed through the seat belt in a similar fashion.

“Genuine,” Ford announced, pointing out the driver’s side window.

“What?” Stan furrowed his brow.

“The word ‘genuine’ was on that billboard back there. I’m up to ‘H.’”

“Dang it,” Mabel said. “What letter am I at again?”

“You were on ‘E.’”

“What? No I wasn’t, I got ‘end!’”

“That was ‘weekend.’ Compound words don’t count.”

“It was hyphenated!”

“Then it was misspelled.”

“Alright,” she conceded, turning to look back out her window with her eyes squinted and mouth pressed shut in focus.

After a brief silence, Waddles flopped down on the floor with a snort, then proceeded to climb up across the console and onto Stan’s lap, standing with all his weight on Stan’s legs for a good minute or two before plopping down. Stan stared dead ahead.

“This is why we eat pigs.”

“Exit!” Mabel shouted happily, pointing to a billboard advertising a nearby chain restaurant and making Dipper jolt and drop his book.

* * *

 

A little while after everyone was settled back into Gravity Falls, two sets of Pines twins and one Soos were transfixed on the new episode of _Ducktective,_ wherein it would finally be revealed how Ducktective had survived his fall from the Dover Cliffs. Well, Stan and Mabel (who had on her officially licensed Ducktective hat, naturally) were watching intently from the folding chairs at the table, Dipper sat on an arm of Soos’ armchair with Ford standing in the corner of the room with a Pitt Cola in hand, both watching mostly just to pass the time, and Soos was sitting forward in the chair with his eyes snapped open, bloodshot from staring at the TV for the entirety of each act.

It cut to commercial after the reveal of Ducktective’s state-of-the-art mechanical webbed feet that now allowed him to stand menacingly above the entire city of London. Soos finally allowed himself to blink.

“The ante...it’s been... _upped,_ ” he whispered, wonderstruck.

“Hmm,” Mabel said. “I just hope this doesn’t mean Ducktective’s turning evil all of a sudden. He’s gotta at least have some _motivation._ ”

“He wants revenge on a city that forced him to partner up with an idiot cop who wouldn’t know a fingerprint from a shovel,” Stan gestured toward the TV. “There’s your motivation.”

“I think she means an _identifiable_ one,” countered Dipper, propping himself up to face Stan’s direction.

“So did I.”

Dipper raised his eyebrows and nodded to himself, turning his head back toward the screen just as another commercial started, one with an old man sitting on his front porch, sadly watching his family play in the yard.

“ _Dealing with joint pain?_ ” the voiceover said as the image flipped to the old man attempting to play a board game with an equally-old cat.. “ _Has your quality of life deteriorated to the point that the mere sight of you depresses your loved ones?_ ” The cat batted the game pieces off the table and jumped down, making the man hang his head despondently.

Stan’s brain was fine today. There was no memory therapy in progress, but some less consequential things had been coming back to him lately. Now, what triggered it was a scene at the end of the medicine commercial that showed the old man dancing with his small granddaughter. It brought to mind a similar picture from a family reunion years before, one of Mabel gleefully dancing on Shermie’s feet while he sang a showtune to her: one he had sung to her at every family event, or at least the ones Stan had seen. It had her name in it - he recalled that much, because she and Shermie used to always shout it in unison at one point in the song. He wasn’t sure why he was compelled at this moment to nudge Mabel’s shoulder and ask about it, but he knew that not being able to remember the song that had always made her smile and giggle so much through those years was going to bother him.

“Hey, Mabel,” he said. “What’s that song your grandpa used ta’ always sing?”

“Grandpa Shermie sings a lot,” she replied. “Do you remember how it goes?”

“Eh, not really,” he shrugged. “It was like, _da-da-dada-daaa-daaaa_ …”

“Oh!” Mabel lit up with a smile. “ _Somehow the soooomethiiing, seems a little sooomethiing, something something some-thing something_ _Mabel comes through the doooor_ …”

“That one,” Stan pointed a finger-gun at her. “You used to get so excited you’d come at him headfirst; prob’ly nailed ‘im in the gut a few times.” In his mind he saw her running up to Shermie at family reunions, insisting that he sing it for her _immediately_ upon his arrival. For something that he had only observed and not really been a part of, it was surprisingly fond remembering.

“Heh, yeah,” Mabel’s face fell, and she rubbed the back of her neck. “Guess it’s been a while…”

Stan furrowed his brow. Something was wrong, but he knew better than to bring it up in front of everyone, even though they’d all heard the conversation and could also tell. He’d never really had any deep conversations with Shermie, so Mabel probably knew him better than he did, and Stan couldn’t guess what might have happened to make get this way now. He looked across the room at Ford, who appeared to share the concern. Soos recognized the look on Mabel’s face and knew full well that it wasn’t something that made for fun conversation, so he certainly wouldn’t be the one to press her. Dipper cast his eyes down at the floor knowingly, but again, no one asked.

By the time the episode reached its climax, everyone had become so engrossed in the story that this moment was all but forgotten. After wreaking havoc on London, the Ducktectron shorted out and toppled over with him still inside. He came to in the constable’s arms, and the subtitles translated his quacks as, “ _What...what happened? Who did this?_ ” upon him seeing the wreckage. Immediately the screen faded to black.

“Whoa!” Mabel yelped.

“Doods,” said Soos, “This. Changes. _Everything!_ ” As he spoke, he stood up quickly and pumped both his fists in the air, punching the lamp to his left and cutting his hand on the shattered bulb. The base of the lamp toppled over and broke as well, and everyone in the room simply stared at Soos, who didn’t seem to have any reaction to his injury or the damaged property.

“Well,” he said smiling, “Time to go take these glass shards out of my skin.” He held his head up and started toward the kitchen with his intact hand on his hip.

Dipper sighed as he followed after him, “I’ll get him the first aid kit.”

“I’ll glue my lamp back together,” Stan said, walking over from his chair and picking up the ceramic pieces on the floor before setting the lampshade back on the side table. “Nothin’ a giant tub a’ super glue can’t fix.” He’d been using the same industrial-size container since the ‘90s, and it hadn’t failed him yet.

“I’ll get the craft supplies!” Mabel exclaimed.

“Ooh no,” Stan put a hand out to stop her. “No dazzlers, or rhine-sequins, or whatever else on this thing. All last summer I couldn’t pick up a spoon without getting glitter on my hand that I couldn’t wash off for three full days.”

Mabel pouted and slumped down in her chair, “Fine.” She took off her Ducktective hat and tossed it behind her, where it landed in the middle of the armchair.

The three boys left to start their respective tasks, and Mabel and Ford were left alone in the living room as a _Tiger Fist_ rerun started.

“Ugh,” Mabel rolled her eyes, “I’ve seen this one. It’s just a slice-of-life family bonding episode; the villain doesn’t even show up until the last five minutes!” She knew Ford never cared about what was on TV, so she muted it and took out her scrapbook and a bright teal case full of gel pens, scissors, and glue sticks, and started pasting in pictures from her first few days back in town.

Ford found himself isolated on the other side of the room, which was now inhabited only by him and the family member he was still the least acquainted with. Both because he knew it shouldn’t have stayed that way and out of some genuine curiosity regarding her artistic proclivities, he crossed the room and sat down at the folding chair across from her as she worked.

“What are you up to?” he asked.

“Scrapbooking,” she replied, holding up the pages she had been filling. The biggest photo on the left page was of a particularly fat squirrel, captioned, “New friend!” in sparkly purple ink.

Ford let out a chuckle, “I guess that’s obvious, huh.”

“Yeah,” Mabel said with a shrug, putting her scrapbook back on the table and continuing to doodle in it.

“So…” Ford searched his brain for another conversation starter. “How’s school going?”

Mabel raised an eyebrow without looking up. “We graduated,” she said. “You were there, remember?”

“Right, of course,” he cleared his throat. “Any, uh, any boys in your class that you like?”

Mabel blushed, but not in her usual cute way. “Um, no, not - not right now.” She buried her head a little more between her sleeves as she drew some more butterflies in the margins.

Ford glanced over at the TV. It was that joint medication commercial again, jogging his memory of earlier.

“Mabel,” he said, as her eyes stayed stuck on her book, “You don’t have to answer, but did something happen to Shermie? I’ve spoken with him a few times since I’ve been back, but I don’t know that much about what he’s been doing all these years.”

“Oh…” Mabel said quietly, stopping in the middle of underlining something with her green pen, “Um, well nothing really happened to him.” She put the pen down and lifted her head back up, though her eyes stayed lowered. “It’s more like something happened to _me._ I mean, not exactly _to_ me; it’s always kinda been a thing, but he doesn’t know, and…” She finally looked at him and now saw a worried look, which only made this moment more nerve-wracking. Her brow furrowed. “He wouldn’t like it.”

Ford’s eyes widened. “I see,” he replied. For possibly the first time since he’d known her, he fully understood what was going through her mind. He recognized the unease and apprehension in her eyes, and he remembered feeling the same racing pulse years before that she must have had now.

The one thing Mabel knew in this moment that Ford didn’t was that upstairs, tucked at the very bottom of her suitcase was a sweater with three stripes. She couldn’t wear it around Grandpa Shermie; he acted too weird about the sort of thing it represented. Maybe if he knew what it meant to her, he’d consider her an exception, but she didn’t want to take that risk. Here, she was keeping it hidden until she could gauge the possible views that Stan and Ford might have on it.

“And I don’t know if you would, either.” Her face started turning pink. “Just ‘cause I don’t know you as well as I know Stan and Dipper and everybody, and I dunno what you think of this stuff that’s going on with me, but it feels like we _just_ became family, and I saw what happened with you and -” She cut herself off, but Ford’s face told her that he knew precisely what she had been on track to say.

Ford paused for a brief moment to contemplate this exchange. From where she stood, she had good reason to expect him to reject her. He knew what his track record was with his family so far. He also knew that Mabel was brave; she had proven that a good number of times before, and was trying to do so again. But the last thing he wanted to do at this point was put her in a position where she was the one who had to be. There were a number of ways he could avoid that, but he took the route that seemed the most likely to alleviate their shared anxiety.

“I’m gay, you know,” he said, eyebrows raised.

Mabel’s face relaxed some. Now she just looked surprised.

“What?”

“I’m gay. I like men.”

“No, I-I know, but…” She chuckled. It was on her for making assumptions, she supposed. “That’s great, Grunkle Ford.”

“Thank you,” he smiled, “And if Shermie doesn’t like whatever _you_ are -”

“I’m bi,” Mabel blurted out.

Ford opened his mouth to speak, but had to stop briefly while he processed what she had just said. All he could do after that was speak candidly.

“You know, that actually explains a lot,” he said.

Mabel sighed with relief, “I guess it does.”

As she finished speaking, Soos came back in with a bandaged hand, followed by Dipper.

“Hey doods, check it out,” he chirped, approaching the table and taking a black marker from the case. He drew some curvy lines on his bandages to resemble white feathers, then held up his artwork and stiffened his arms to mimic a robot. “I’m Ducktectron!”

“Not yet, you’re not!” Mabel challenged, standing up in her chair. She hopped down and grabbed her hat from the armchair, then stood up on the armrest to bestow it upon Soos.

“Good thinking, Hambone,” he said. She was already beaming, fists on her hips and eyes shut with a proud smile.

“Oy,” came an aggravated sigh from the doorway. There stood Stan, holding the shoddily glued together lamp under his arm. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “I can’t believe I gave this guy a promotion.” He set the lamp back on the side table and placed the lampshade lopsidedly on top.

Dipper smiled at just how easy it was to see through Stan’s (at least partially) feigned annoyance. After a moment, his eyes widened when he got an idea.

“Oh! Soos, you need a beak!” He ran back into the kitchen and came back with a tube of Pringles, pouring two into his hand and giving them to Soos, who placed them one on top of the other with the concave sides facing each other, then put them in between his teeth, careful not to bite down. He tromped around the living room with his arms and legs bent, his hands flat, and his movements stiff.

The sight of Dipper and Mabel laughing so joyfully at Soos’ unapologetic ridiculousness while Stan rolled his eyes and did all he could not to smile brought Ford to a sudden realization: he was with family. Sure, he’d known they were family before, but for the first time it registered with him that he wasn’t merely observing their lives; he was a part of this. He was an uncle whose nephew no longer put him on a pedestal (or had at least lowered it), whose niece he had been able to put at ease and finally find some common ground with. He wasn’t sure how to refer to the man in the midst of a robot duck impersonation in all this, but he was certainly growing on him. He had a place in a family that accepted each other for all their faults and strangeness, that stood by each other no matter how different they were, or felt they were. Family did that. He had taken some time to learn that himself, but he was sure of it. And he knew that underneath a layer or two of doubt, Mabel did, too.

It wasn’t much longer into that summer before she ran downstairs into the living room to show off her beautiful sweater of bright pink, purple, and blue to Stan, Soos, Melody, and Wendy.

By then, the fear in her eyes had vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update 3/29/19: It's been a hot second, but this is still very much in progress; right now I'm in the outlining stages for the next four chapters, as well as some continuations of a few other fics that have gone untouched for way longer. Right now, though, I'm trying to focus more on school, my film blog, and the zine I'm currently writing for (more on that later). See y'all soon!


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